


The way revenge falls

by MeatPanic (Ossicle)



Category: Mugen no Juunin | Blade of the Immortal
Genre: Angst and Porn, Bad guys are bastards, Everyone fucks Magatsu, Explicit Sexual Content, Good guys are bastards, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Rape, Revenge Sex, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-03-28 05:21:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13897128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ossicle/pseuds/MeatPanic
Summary: Magatsu learns how badly love and kenshi bullshit mix.(After the kidnapping / quarry fight in vol.15, Rin doesn't return in time, so Manji and Giichi try to extract her location from the defeated Magatsu. Tensions play out, shit gets personal, and Magatsu takes the brunt of it all.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING. Rape fic. Trauma porn with plot.
> 
> Specific warnings: graphic violence (it's MnJ ffs), torture, graphic m/m rape (incl sexual torture, rape by partner/ex, sex with unconscious person, mindbreak), mentions of past m/f gangrape and murder (canon), child witness, a few fucked up pseudo-romantic moments, generally trying to avoid buying into rape tropes while still exploiting them for porn value.
> 
> Probably no one ships this ancient shit anymore, so this is mostly my own little Magatsu fix. Confession: haven't watched the new movie.

 

The immortal staggered from the shadows and settling dust, trailing black blood through the pale belly of the moonlit quarry. Dying worms animated every drop. He could feel them inside him, bubbling, breeding, then bursting apart into thread and glue—knitting his carved-up flesh back together. The smell of wormdeath was overpowering, but that meant victory.

"Hell of a mindfuck," Manji grumbled to himself as his eye reformed and his vision cleared.

He left his Itto-Ryu opponent rotting in the dark behind him, and went to check on the outcome of the other match.

The quarry widened into a space like a sunken arena, with rope-and-slat bridges crossing far above. Dark splatter already painted the stone here and there, and he followed it. A barbarian sword, a broken piece of a scythe-like weapon, and then three figures lying on the ground: Giichi, alive. Some Itto-Ryu asshole, dead.

And Magatsu…

The young Itto-Ryu swordsman was sprawled on the stone like a discarded doll. He didn’t look like he’d been taken down with a blade, more like he’d been thrown against a wall until he broke. He wasn’t moving.

Manji had a brief moment of wrenching anxiety before he remembered that this was a good thing—they were enemies. Always had been, even if they'd shared the road for a little while. Magatsu had fuckin set Manji up, in the end. And what fuckin for? To avenge his Itto-Ryu buddies? Hah, like he gave a shit.

He stopped before he got to the crumpled body. Suddenly, he didn't really wanna know if it was still breathing.

A short distance away, Giichi slowly sat up and pushed cracked glasses up on his nose with an air of mild irritation. The government assassin seemed mostly whole.

“Fuckin napping, Giichi?” Manji came over to him instead.

“Indeed. Is the kid…?”

“Yeah, he’s good n’ splatted over there. What’d you do to him?”

Giichi gestured up above, to the remains of a collapsed rope bridge. “Gravity.”

“Nice one,” Manji admitted. “That's impressive, you taking that one down.”

“You’ve fought him before?”

“Yeah. Lost. At first.”

Giichi raised an eyebrow above his round glasses. “I see. And this whole setup, capturing the girl to lure you out here... He wished to finish it?”

Manji shrugged. “You heard him. Revenge or just cuz or whatever. Kenshi crap.”

“Hm. I got the feeling that it was somehow personal.”

Manji just shrugged again, irritated. The worms were almost finished stitching back together all the old wounds reopened by the worm poison, but one in his chest throbbed with particular urgency. Manji's gaze wandered back to the distorted jumble of long limbs and spiky hair lying on the ground, feet away.

Giichi rose and found his broken weapon. “Well, let’s get your troublesome ward, then. This kidnapping thing has diverted us too long.”

“Right, yeah…” Manji tore his attention away from Magatsu and back to the reason for all of this: Rin.

They went over to the little storage shack that had served as the kidnappers’ base.

“She's not here,” Giichi noted the obvious with infuriating calm.

“They musta moved her,” Manji scrubbed worm gunk from his eye and kicked at the cut ropes on the floor. Fuckin Rin, getting her ass kidnapped…

“You're going to insist we find the girl before attending to business. Aren't you.”

“She… yeah. I am.”

Giichi rubbed his head. The assassin seemed pensive, but unconcerned. “Well, there's the kid, if he's still breathing. We could persuade him to talk.”

“Yeah…”

Yeah, the kid.

Magatsu.

_(Taito…)_

The young swordsman was still laid out on the ground outside. But he was stirring—not dead after all. _Shit._ Giichi went to pick him up by the wrist but Manji shouldered him aside and got him instead.

The shack would do for cover. Manji dumped him in a heap, facedown on the floor.

Magatsu was awake now. He managed to raise his head up a bit, but Manji could tell from the wretched arc of his neck that even that was costing him.

“Breaking the fingers is the conventional place to start,” Giichi pushed up his strange circular glasses on his nose, all business-like.

“Fingers sound good, Magatsu?” Manji nudged him in the ribs with a foot and the hunched figure gave a low, dry laugh.

“Especially effective on a swordsman. Or there's the cutting route,” Giichi continued reasonably. “I’d also advocate for the fingers in that case.”

“Could work. I was tryna think of something that suited an Itto-Ryu psycho, though,” Manji shook his head.

“Better gimme some of your fancy blood worms before you start then,” Magatsu croaked from the floor. “So you can cut as much as you like without me kicking it. Sounds fun right?”

“Heheh. Maybe yeah. But then I'd have another unkillable bastard to deal with and lemme tell ya. The world don't need more than one of me.”

“Aw but just think, Manji.” He rolled himself over on his back with a pained grunt and arched a cocky brow at the scarred immortal standing over him. “What the hell could you do to a breakable little mortal that'd even get close to what that poison felt like? Having every wound you've ever gotten burst open one after the other…”

“Nothin,” Manji admitted. “But that's not why we're here.”

Giichi had located some intact lengths of rope. “Indeed. We need only extract the girl's location from you. Punishment is beside the point.”

Manji corrected him. “Oh nono, punishment is for sure on the docket here. Actually, I meant that the poison bullshit was beside the point. Attacking me after weakening me… that was smart. Cuz we're on opposite sides here, and anything goes. Ain’t that the Itto-Ryu motto?”

Manji knelt and pulled down the mask covering the lower half of Magatsu's face. The fuckin punk kid had that half grin on, blood smeared over his lower lip. This little upstart _shit_ from some muddy backwater hell, this peasant nobody, so full of himself and his skill. Running with fuckin _Anotsu_ and his brutal band of Itto-Ryu thugs, calling themselves a sword school and thinking there was some greater point to their reign of chaos...

He didn't know shit.

Manji watched the first flashes of uncertainty flicker over the young face. He absently wiped the blood away from Magatsu's thin bottom lip with a light thumb.

Magatsu startled and frowned at the gesture. “What, you want a kiss before you snap my fingers off?”

“The hell I do. You probably taste like your prettyboy boss. His cumrag.”

Magatsu laughed suddenly. “Holy shit. You’re _jealous!”_

Manji spat in irritation. “What, of Anotsu? Fuck that puffed up shitlord.”

“Yeah, of Anotsu. Did you seriously think I'd stay with you? Some booze-stained, wandering cutthroat? I belong with the Itto-Ryu.”

“A paramour, Manji? I'm surprised.” Giichi didn't sound surprised, he sounded indifferent. “I thought you were entirely devoted to the girl's care.”

“He ain't my anything,” Manji shoved the grinning head back to the ground and took the rope from Giichi.

“You thinkin of what coulda been, Manji?” Magatsu needled his captor while he was rolled onto his stomach and his arms were tied behind his back. “What it'd be like to have a real companion, an equal to share in your curse? Immortal lovers… like a poem! Hahaaa…”

Manji just spat. He lashed Magatsu’s forearms together and crossed the rope above his elbows. He pulled, cinching it so his shoulders were wrenched back, the blades almost touching and the bones straining in their sockets. His left arm was clearly broken at the elbow—this must be beyond painful, but he was still talking shit.

 _“Nngh!_ Hah…ah… you… you wouldn't have to hold back when you fucked me either. You could do anything. And the worms would just stitch me back together.”

Manji took another rope from Giichi and wrapped it around his slender neck like a lead. Still wordless while Magatsu went on.

“I've thought about it, you know. About you.”

“Were ya thinking of me when you kidnapped Rin and used her as bait in your shitty revenge scheme? She had nothing to do with your friends’ deaths.”

“Her? Uhhh, she's the entire reason you killed them? Anyway, I was doing you a favor. She's your weakness, you know? If you didn't have her you could actually be someone.”

“Someone like Anotsu huh. I'm sick of that guy.” He hauled on the rope and pulled the prone figure to his knees. “Lemme tell you what I do to people who _take_ from me. My sister? Killed by bored thugs for fun. So I killed em all, one by one, right there.”

Magatsu thought he knew where this was going. “I didn't kill your shitty little substitute sister thing. She's fuckin fine.”

“Yeah, that's why I'm not gonna kill you.”

He tore the mask away and pulled the kimono off Magatsu's shoulders, tugging it down around his arms and waist so his upper body was exposed.

“You're going to use him?” Giichi noted with detachment. He'd been watching the exchange without comment.

“He's not. Bastard, you're _not.”_ There was an edge of panic in Magatsu’s voice.

“I dunno,” Manji shrugged. “You gonna tell me where Rin is?”

Magatsu scoffed to himself, but shivered. “I don't know where she is,” he answered.

“I still say that fingers are more efficient,” Giichi sighed.

“Maybe,” Manji grabbed a fistful of the spiky hair and forced his head back. He pushed calloused fingers into his mouth and down his throat and Magatsu pulled away instinctively, gagging, not even thinking to bite.

“I’ll tear your fuckin cock off if you... if you fuckin dare…” The smirk was gone from his face.

“Shut up and bring your mouth back here. You're gonna need the moisture in a sec.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

He was a tough one, Magatsu. He’d glared and struggled and cursed while Manji took his mouth. But he made no sound, kneeling with his neck lashed awkwardly to an upright post and his arms wrenched back, while Manji fed slow inches into his body. 

Manji could feel him jerk and shudder with the pain, though. His spine was a twisting knot. Manji hadn't eased him into it at all, like he used to whenever they’d spent the night together before, warm with sake and falling against each other with easy laughter. 

He had to feel this.

Magatsu did make a small sound when the heavy body fell flush against him, hands gripped tight around his ribs and the heat of their bodies mingling. A high, hurt sound.

“Good, huh?” Manji mocked.

He just scoffed and curled into himself even more. 

Manji ran a hand up Magatsu’s tightly curved spine, the subtly scar-traced skin. Many more scars after his fight with Shira, but he healed so fast and flawless they were almost invisible. Manji’s own blade jammed through the middle of him was still the largest mark. You could almost imagine that he was untouched… He wasn’t though, not anymore. Anotsu had gotten his hands on everything, every part of Magatsu that Manji had taught pleasure to so carefully.

He pulled halfway out and ground back in, hard.

“Man… ji…” Magatsu grit out as the scarred man started to pound into him, jerking his body.

“What.”

But he held onto whatever he was going to say. He grit his teeth and tried not to let out any more than he already had. Tried. But he couldn't hide the edge in his sharp little breaths every time Manji shoved into him. Or the way his hole clenched, spasming around the jabbing cock. It was wearing him down, thrust by thrust, to raw nerves and nothing.

Manji hadn't expected for this to get to the kid so fast, if at all. He figured he'd get his cock in him once more, humiliate him, pay him back with change for… whatever. Everything. That Itto-Ryu shit. The poison.  _ Leaving.  _

He hadn't expected to get so into it himself either. He jerked Magatsu's hips back onto him suddenly, just to unbalance him a little more, make him make that  _ sound _ again. It didn't work and he felt a stab of irritation. He jammed his weight forward into the slender body instead, so the rope bit into his neck and his air was almost cut off, and that forced out a sound that was closer to choking than breaking but still fed Manji's sudden need to  _ fucking wreck him.  _ He’d almost crawled on top of him by this point, shoving his whole cock down and into him again and again. Magatsu was barely bracing on his knees, trying to keep upright, breathing labored. It all felt so fucking good.

The thing about chasing revenge is how it promises and promises catharsis.  _ It'll be better in a moment, so much better if you just keep pushing, harder, again, a little more. _ It tells you,  _ yeah it feels good now but not as good as you know it will if you just… _ And then it's gone, it's over, and it's nowhere near enough.

Manji knew this, but he was so wrapped up in it already. This was better than any time he’d fucked Magatsu before, better even than sinking his blade into his stomach…

So the stupid kid wanted to avenge his losses?  _ Anotsu's _ losses? Well, Manji was just showing him what the fuck that meant from the other side. What revenge fucking  _ felt _ like. Like this, and  _ this, _ a cock forced so far inside him that he’d never stop feeling it, being fucked and fucked until he knows his body is ruined.

Magatsu finally couldn’t hold it all in, and a long sound of utter anguish shuddered out of him, punctuated by Manji’s jarring thrusts. Manji came inside him suddenly, before he could stop himself, and it wasn't fucking enough.

The kid was slumped against the ties binding his neck to the post. Still shivering with shock and revulsion, breath rattling from the pressure on his throat. Slick dripped from his ass, threaded with blood. Manji considered him for a moment, and then untied him, head and arms both. He was too beaten down to offer any resistance now anyway. 

Manji rolled him onto his back and took hold of his chin to examine his face. “Still in there?”

There was a dark laugh from somewhere in the battered body. His eyes tracked over heavily to meet Manji’s. “I'll find a way to kill your immortal ass. I fuckin promise you. I'll kill you...”

“Sure ya will.” Manji shoved two fingers into his messy hole and he flinched violently.

“Ah!  _ Ahhh… _ bastard… fuckin bastard…”

“You gonna tell me where Rin is?” He twisted the fingers inside him. The tremor that wracked him was probably as much shame as pain.

“I don't… know…”

“Tch, you're making this harder than it has to be.” Manji wiped his fingers on the loosely hanging kimono and sat back on his heels to look over at Giichi. “Well, you’re up. He’s prepped and everything.”

Magatsu jerked suddenly, looking over at the assassin with wide eyes. “Manji…”

“Not my preferred method,” Giichi objected. “And I hardly have reason.”

“He's earned it.” Manji turned Magatsu's face toward him. “You probably done this yourself more’n a few times, huh, Magatsu?”

_ “Never,” _ he snarled.

“You're fulla shit. You ‘belong’ with the Itto-Ryu huh? Well I seen what they do in the dojos they take down. You, Giichi?”

The assassin considered Manji and then Magatsu, thinking. “…Yes. I’ve seen what they do.”

“This is their fucking calling card.” Manji leaned in close to Magatsu's face. “Rin says you were there when Anotsu had her family killed. She watched her mother raped to death, and what did you do?”

“I didn't touch her or her fuckin mother.”

“Just watched, huh? Let it happen? Coward. You could have at least offed the poor kid and spared her the trauma.” He stood. “Giichi, I'm not coming with you til we find Rin.”

Giichi regarded the abused form in silence as Magatsu's breathing began to speed up. He was a battered heap of purpling flesh, beaten and forced open, every inch of him laid bare to hostile eyes. Finally Giichi went over to give him an experimental nudge with his foot. He flinched and stared back, fearful but still challenging.

“Not the most direct form of torture,” Giichi grumbled.

“Breaking fingers and cutting on him won't get you anywhere with this guy.” Manji argued. “This is what'll get to him.”

“I’d prefer to decide that for myself. You’ve had your try.”

Manji snorted. “Whatever. Try, I guess.”

Magatsu made that hollow laugh sound again, and crossed his arms over his eyes.

“Lend me a blade, since you’ve destroyed mine,” Giichi directed. Manji selected a small piece with one straight point and one curved point, and flicked it toward him. The assassin caught it with a reproachful look and turned to their prisoner. 

“I don’t have the tools to replicate the exact technique I’ve seen employed by the comrades you wish to avenge. But this should do.”

 

* * *

 

The assassin was good, Manji noted, sucking on the remains of his pipe. But Magatsu wouldn't break just from something like this, Giichi must know that.

They’d tied him sitting up against the post this time, with his arms outstretched behind him to either side. His eyes were closed and his head dropped down, but he was awake. Giichi was being careful to keep him conscious.

Giichi had started by driving the blade tip up and under each of his fingernails on one hand, which was pretty routine. That made Magatsu grit his teeth and shudder, but he didn’t start to really feel it until Giichi went back along and started levering up each nail from its bed. He jolted with each one, mouth open in a silent scream and sweat pouring off him.

He still wasn’t even making any sound, though.

Giichi was getting impatient. He flipped the blade around to the hooked side and tried something else.

It didn’t look like anything particularly bad to Manji at first--just some long, shallow slices around one forearm. Two up either side, then across the wrist and below the elbow. Magatsu realized what was happening around the same time as Manji. His eyes went wide and he started pulling at the ropes before he mastered himself and stilled. 

“Do you have something to tell us,” Giichi prompted, but didn’t get an answer.

So he placed the blade tip under one corner of the rectangle he’d traced on the young swordsman’s arm, and began slicing and pulling up on the skin. Magatsu still wasn’t making any sound, but there’s something about your own skin coming off that’s impossible to look away from, and he watched with open horror as the tendons in his forearm were laid bare one by one.

 

* * *

 

Still didn’t work, though. They’d cut, skinned, and pulled the nails off one hand, and then beaten the other, already broken one with a heavy piece of wood until it was twisted. Nothing. Magatsu was conscious but silent, back to his drooped position with his eyes closed.

“Told ya,” Manji muttered as he cut the ropes again, and toppled him onto the floor.

“So you did,” Giichi replied tersely.

“So can we do this my way now?”

“I suppose it's the most expedient option.”

At their feet, Magatsu was suddenly tense and alert again, snapping out of his trancelike state.

“Don't be all businesslike about it like that.” Manji rolled his eyes. “You got a little piece of revenge yourself, I can tell. Someone of yours, huh? And if it was Itto-Ryu that did em, you  _ know _ this is how it went.”

“...It was.”

_ “Manji—”  _ Magatsu blurted. Manji ignored him.

Giichi shrugged finally and kicked their prisoner's legs apart.

“No…” he tried to shift away and Giichi caught his ankle. “Fuck, fuck,  _ no…  _ I'll fucking kill you…  _ Manji…” _

“Now you're feeling talkative, huh, Magatsu,” Manji mocked.

The unsmiling assassin pressed the resisting thighs apart and fit himself between them. He had to stroke himself for a while before he was hard enough. Apparently not as keen as Manji to punish the kid so carnally. The look on his face was determined, though. 

He started to push into the swollen hole, Manji's leavings making the way slick. 

“Ah!  _ Ahhhh… no…” _

Manji sat against the post, chin in hand, watching Magatsu's beautiful fucking face contort into something painful to even look at. The rest of him was twisted in pain too. Legs forced wide apart, hips trying to stutter away from the cock that was slowly spearing him. The sharp spread of his ribs rose and fell with his panicked breaths. A different kind of pain than the cutting, though. Not something that let him escape into his own head so easily.

Magatsu’s eyes found Manji’s. Something about Manji watching him being raped—maybe his indifference, maybe the tacit promise that this was going to happen again and again—it cracked Magatsu finally. He started rambling and struggling weakly.

“Please.”

“Please what, kid,” Manji questioned casually.

“S-stop…”

Giichi made an impatient noise in his throat and jammed a palm down against his face, pushing it away and against the floor. He leaned on the hand and fucked him, steady and brutal.

“St-op!… Manji!…  _ ahh! ahhhh…” _

He’d come completely apart now, pleading as though Manji was the one fucking him. His eyes were staring straight through the immortal, though, into nothing. 

“Manji… I'll fuckin kill you… please… _please_ stop please… kill you….”

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

Rin knew what was happening by the sound of it, before she'd even reached the little shack. 

She'd escaped her captors by herself this time, and, and, and she’d been racing to get the medicine, to save Manji, protect him for once. Useless her, thinking she could save anyone. Stupid, guilty her. As if she could do anything but watch them suffer.

She clutched the antidote to the worm poison and let her feet carry her silently up to the door, toward the thick darkness and the gut-wrenching sounds spilling out of it.

It was Magatsu. Manji and Giichi were torturing Magatsu.

His body was heaped all wrong on the floor, a pale arch illuminated against the dark, being jolted ruthlessly while his hands clawed at stone. By the broken desperation of his voice, she could tell they'd been working on him for a while. They were going to take him and take him and grind him down to nothing. She knew how this went.

How do you describe the sound of someone being ruined that way? Spoiled meat hitting the floor, wordless dying animal cries, slick impacts ripping breath from raw lungs…  Pain and pain and pain. 

But that hardly even touches it. It's not just a sound, it's... it's something that hits your gut before your brain. Something that twists and grates inside like it's happening to you. Rin knew the sound like she knew the sensation of hunger, like she knew a pursuer was behind her when she ran in her dreams. 

It was the same as before. But different too.

There was no jeering this time. No laughter or spitting or joking. Not like the Itto-Ryu tearing her mother apart in their dojo, their home, one after the other. And Rin had been restrained then. She'd been a silent, horrified witness, unseen by all except… except Magatsu. He'd just stood to the side, a casual angle against the wall while her mother's blood spread over the floor. He'd watched Rin instead, with uncaring intensity. Like she was watching him now.

Manji was watching Magatsu too, sitting to the side as the assassin pounded into him. But he glanced up and froze when he met her eyes. She saw disbelief worry fear (care) play across his face and then relief and then… fear again. 

He held her eyes, suddenly aware of what she was seeing. 

She gifted him a shaky smile. And then she went back down to wait and wander in the empty open space of the quarry.

It was for her. Everything he did was for her.

Him, always protecting her, killing for her, always coming to find her,  _ always. _ And her… useless. Her, forever hovering at the edge of atrocity, its fumbling author.

 

* * *

 

Giichi frowned down at the catatonic mess below him. Magatsu’s stream of threats and pleas had long since faded to wordless cries and then just grating gasps. His eyes were unfocused and his reflexes gone. Not even a delayed flinch when Giichi jostled him now.

“You've miscalculated, Manji. This method reduced him too quickly.” He pulled his softening cock out of the still form and straightened his clothes. He hadn't reached his climax but that was immaterial to the exercise.

“Guess so,” Manji grunted.

“Perhaps he'll come around if we start on his hands again.”

He looked expectantly at the tall, scarred man, who was just sitting there staring at Magatsu and chewing his cheek. He seemed lost in thought.

“Manji,” he prodded. “Give me one of your ridiculous blades.” 

“After,” Manji growled and stood. “Move, lemme have him again.”

“I understand there is a crime you wish to resolve on your young ward’s behalf. But fucking him into a coma won't help us locate her.” Giichi argued reasonably.

“Doesn't matter. She escaped by herself already. Move.”

“She… escaped? How can you be sure.”

“She's here. Outside.”

“I see. I no longer need be a party to this, then.” His usually expressionless voice took on a tone of distinct annoyance. He tucked his broken weapon into his belt and turned to leave. Then paused.

“She saw?”

Manji gave an impatient huff in reply.

Giichi shook his head. “Doesn't matter. She must know by now that this is the way of it.” He left.

 

* * *

 

Giichi went and found the girl pacing out her sorrow through the echoing quarry. Hiccupping and snuffling like a child… How strange to think of the number of men this soft little thing had killed with her tiny knives. And how many more had been killed by her maniac protector on her behalf. She must be hardened to this by now, surely. She must know what she'd chosen in following the way of revenge.

She heard him coming, which was impressive, but she didn’t take any defensive stance.  _ How _ was she still so naive?

“I regret that you witnessed what you did,” he offered.

She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and gave a little shrug. “It’s not like I've never seen it before.”

“So you escaped on your own. Resourceful.”

“Not resourceful. Not anything.” Tears fell down her face again. “I wanted to kill him. I wanted all of them  _ dead. _ But I couldn’t, I never can. And I can’t even save anyone either. I can only cause… this. All of this.”

Giichi reassured her. “Manji’s transgressions are not on your shoulders.”

“Yes they are! If I’d stayed, if I hadn’t run off to get that antidote, if he’d known I was safe… if I hadn't gotten surprised in the first place… we wouldn't be here. He. He wouldn’t be doing this. It’s his… they were together, you know? My revenge wouldn't have fallen on them like this.”

“Why don’t you stop him, then.”

She sniffled and smiled. “Why don’t you?”

He didn’t say anything.

“This is the way of it,” she mourned.

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

 

The other thing about revenge is how it promises and promises grace. You tore apart someone you used to love while they begged you to stop, and it's okay. It wasn't you, it was someone else. The situation.  _ Them. _ Just the way of it. It'll feel justified in a moment, if you just keep going.

“Magatsu?” Manji hovered over him and felt shallow breath still rattling past his lips. He put his forehead to the other’s. It was hot, fevered. “Taito… You didn't have to take her to make me fight you. We coulda done this clean.”

There was no reply, of course. 

Manji ran a hand over the unconscious body and it stirred slightly, groaned, stilled again. 

Then he pushed Magatsu’s thighs apart and forced himself slowly into the ravaged hole.

Not even a shudder this time—completely still, open, broken. Magatsu was softer, more ready than Manji had ever gotten him with sweet words and pleasure. Defeat made him so, so much better. Manji let his weight fall against him again and again, penetrating him slow, but heavy and deep. He watched how his head rolled back limp on his neck with every thrust. 

He counted Magatsu’s wounds. One arm split open, the other scraped raw from falling, both broken. Fingertips dipped red. Enough to kill any other mortal. But he was so strong.

It almost made Manji wish he knew how to transfer his bloodworms to another. Curse him like he'd said. The immortal would never admit it, but he’d thought of it too. An equal, a companion. 

He thought of Magatsu's promise to kill him. Liar.

“Why didn't you just give me a full dose of the worm poison.  _ Idiot. _ It woulda worked. I’d be the one ripped up and rotting instead of you, and now there's none left.” 

Cuz of kenshi bullshit, probably. Pride and whatever. Poison wasn't their way. A death bought like that… their egos (screw honor) wouldn't allow it. The Itto-Ryu gang had only given him enough to weaken him, so they could toy with the immortal as he came apart.

Manji held still for a moment, listening to Magatsu's faint breath and the ambient echoes of the quarry.

“Tai…” he rolled the heavy head toward him, and brushed his lips over the other’s.

He felt his chest clench painfully when they parted in response. 

Magatsu stirred, sighed, met Manji’s kiss with hunger. Perfect—his body all limp and trapped, lips all fluttering and desperate, weak. Manji groaned, felt himself throb almost painfully. He pushed into him hard, pressing and grinding over all that swollen, fevered softness. That broken sound came out of Magatsu again, so small it was almost inaudible, but there was nothing left to hold it back.

_ “Ahh _ … shit,” Manji drew back to look at him. “Tai?”

Dark eyes were cracked open and watching him. The bleeding mouth took on its half-grin again. 

“A-Anotsu…” Magatsu whispered.

The tightness in Manji's chest turned to a vice.  _ “Shit…” _

“Kagehisa, it hurts.”

“I’m not Anotsu, you blind little fuck,” Manji growled.

“... fuckin hurts… you're gonna… gonna break me one of these days…” He put crooked fingers to Manji's lips. Was he seeing that noble, haughty face instead of the carved-up one above him? Beautiful, cruel Anotsu. Crude, monstrous Manji.

“Fuckin idiot. You said you'd never go back to him. You said he'd sold his soul to the shogunate. You could be free if you didn’t have him…” Like Manji could be free if he didn’t have Rin. And what would either of them be without their beloved burdens?

“You’re mad about something, I can tell…” Magatsu was still rambling at his desperate vision. “My love…  _ ahh _ … you gonna kill me this time?”

“I… no.” Manji put a hand over the one tracing his own face.

“No…?” Magatsu took Manji's hand and put it to his neck with a slight smile.

Manji  _ should _ kill him. Fuck him with his hands around his neck until he was cold. Be the last to ever have him. Manji flexed his fingers and brushed his thumb over the Adam's apple, but left his touch light. 

Couldn’t…  _ fuck, _ he couldn’t do it.

Magatsu laughed weakly to himself. “Haha… thought so. Coward. Ka… ge… what if… what if someone else… kills me first?”

 

* * *

 

Giichi watched Manji comfort the snuffling girl. The immortal put on a big show of gruffness and scolding, but he still wrapped her in his arms and let her smear tears onto his chest. He scoffed when she produced the antidote, and called her an idiot. She stomped her foot. 

Childish attachments. She was sixteen already, more than old enough to be on her own. And she would be soon…

He finally interrupted them. “Manji. We should dispose of the bodies.”

“Ah, what's the point. They're good where they are.”

“They’ll attract attention. Did you off the kid?”

“No…” Manji couldn't look at him. “He's still in there. More dead than alive at this point anyway.”

“I'll do it then. We don't need loose ends.”

Manji didn't answer, just held onto his weeping charge and pretended that she was the one clinging to him.

_ Coward. _

Giichi went into the shadowed hovel and waited for his eyes to adjust. Post and ropes swam into view, but where there should have been a pale body there was only a dark smear. He went out again.

“He's gone,” he reported tonelessly.

Manji let go of Rin and rushed to see, as though Giichi could have missed something. He snorted in disbelief. “The fuckin state he was in? No fuckin way. He was delirious, barely moving.”

“It appears you have yourself a loose end.”

Manji leaned on the door frame and stared at the empty space for a long time.

 

 


End file.
